HomeLight

I recently saw an advertisement on TV for a service called HomeLight, an online service for buyers and sellers to locate a real estate agent. It was something I hadn’t heard of before, so I thought I’d look into it more and share my findings with you.

Home Light is a San Francisco based company founded by Drew Uher in 2012 after he and his wife found finding the right agent rather difficult. Since then, Home Light raised tons of money from various investors, by 2017 HomeLight had raised $15.5 million. And in August of 2017, HomeLight raised another $40 million from several investors, including Google’s venture capital arm.

HomeLight is a free service for buyers and sellers and boasts of being data driven when locating agents. Agents cannot purchase sponsorship rankings or advertising spots. They claim to have been collecting transaction history since 2009. How it works is that a buyer or seller fills out information about the location, price range and basic data about the home they want to buy or sell. A representative from HomeLight follows up with the buyer/seller to confirm they’re giving agents a truly warm lead. HomeLight then finds three agents that fit the criteria of the buyer/seller and sends the referral to the agent. They want agents to be able to call the lead within 30 minutes. If the agent ends up closing the deal with the client, the agent pays HomeLight a 25% realtor-to-realtor referral fee. There is no charge to the buyer/seller and the agent only pays if the deal closes.

In order to receive referrals, agents do need to make a profile, which mostly consists of agreeing to the referral fee, and other personal and professional information such as name, phone number, real estate license number and brokerage. If you would like to sign up, click here.